Yesterday a number of my clients called me to say they wanted me to design out the FTDI FT232R from current designs and replace it with an alternative (I settled on the Microchip MCP2200). Today, after this news, I called each of them to explain FTDI's change in policy and see if they still wanted to make this change. All of them said yes.

The feedback was essentially this: FTDI's actions left a bad taste in their mouth and they didn't appreciate this action being taken without any real attempt to notify resellers and manufacturers; and now that they know the alternate chip I proposed was about half the price as FTDI's offering they are happy to change. Now none of these people are high volume manufacturers, so it will unclear if FTDI will even notice.

The reason I have found for most clients wanting FTDI is confidence in the brand more than anything else. This move will affect it a little, but people's memories are short, and FTDI responded quickly enough that they won't suffer too much damage. My prediction is that FTDI will take a dip in sales for a quarter , and then things will return to more or less normal; but companies like Microchip will likely see an uptick, because manufacturers more aware of the alternatives.

And why not? It is easy to say that newer is better, but if you can cut costs of running the legacy hardware, and buy the time to work on other things AND work on replacing the legacy system then why not? It sounds like a perfectly reasonable use of resources to me.

Oh in my case: I don't know, and I don't care.

Though I am looking forward to 20+ years from now, when I will find "vintage" windows 9 boxes for sale on ebay...

My cane is made of carbon fiber, so I would say carbon fiber is already "mainstream". What they are talking about is it becoming a commodity. Not just mainstream, but ubiquitous.

Why? Did they promise you anywhere that multiplayer would be available in perpetuity?

The games in question (IIRC) all have single player modes that continue to work.

You might have an argument on a refund, but only if it is prorated over the lifetime of the game. So at this point, you would be owed what? A couple of bucks at most?

Have to disagree, if it is easy that means you aren't taking classes that are challenging enough. If it is easy, then you should find a way to make it hard. Its only by trying to learn things just beyond our reach that we truly grow as professionals.

You don't say why you want a job? Do you feel you have gotten everything you can out of college? Do you need the money? Or are you just itching to get started in your chosen career?

Anything but the middle answer (money) is a bad reason to be looking for work while you are still in school. College is hard enough, and will consume far too much of your time for you to be adding a job as a programmer on top of it — and if it isn't, if everything is just a breeze, then you aren't pushing yourself hard enough.

Don't be in such a rush to get into the workforce. College is a time for you to build skills, be exposed to a broad range of ideas, and to round out your knowledge. It's also your chance to (re)invent yourself. Don't be in such a rush to get passed this, you will have the rest of your life to work.

Besides getting that degree shows potential employers that you can commit and see things through, and that matters a lot. It matters more than the subject of your degree in most cases.

Microsoft's TASC was also impressive because it was written in AppleSoft Basic and compiled with itself. No small feat, considering the Basic of the time. It was the first compiler I ever bought.

Then install Windows 8 and spend $5 on StarDock's Start8 and you never need to be in metro again. Or wait for Windows 8.1 Update 1 and you will get the start menu back.

Or you could do what I do: get used to it. I am almost never in Metro, except for app selection, on my main windows system. YMMV but I find most windows 8 really don't have to spend much time.

Great then gather the data from as all the studies you can find, do the math and then publish a meta study. That would be very useful. My point was to all the people here on /. who are making comments based only on this study. The Reuters story was the the study of the week filler piece.

Fair enough I missed that, and thank you for pointing that out. However my other points still stand. This is a single dataset and not meaningful enough to draw actionable conclusions form.

But you could look at Arizona which mostly doesn't follow DST, or at Dairy Farmers who don't change their sleep schedule because of it, etc

This study only looks at 42,000 admissions in Michigan, and TFA doesn't indicate if that was from one year or multiple years.

I am not saying the study is useless, but it is just one dataset. We need a whole lot more data before we can draw any real conclusions.

So we could see if they compared to Arizona — which mostly doesn't follow DST. For for that matter to dairy farmers who also don't follow DST in their sleep schedule. From TFA it seems like the data only comes from the state of Michigan in what I believe is one year only.

This study is interesting but there is no where near enough data to draw any real conclusions... not that that will stop anyone...

People use USB. Daily. If they have some kind of computer, they will most likely have either some kind of dongle that connects them to their mobile internet, a mouse that uses it, a thumbdrive or other storage device.

People use USB devices, that doesn't mean they use USB directly. Most people have that all setup for them at work. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but I bet we would both be surprised at the number of people who have never inserted a USB device or cable into their computer. And even if they have they may not know it is called USB. They just plug it in to the only place that it fits.

Then there are laptops which have everything the average person needs. All the neighbors I know on my street have laptops.

As for blu-ray, it still pales to regular DVDs every place I see them sold, and the average viewer seems to be moving toward streaming. Blu-Ray is for people who care about Blu-Ray...

So do you judge every Apache project this way? Are Apache, Tomcat, Commons, Batik, CouchDB, etc etc etc all crap until proven otherwise because of Solr? Apache is a collection of projects, maintained by different people.

And not to trash your friend's company, but he picked a technology without trying it out yet? Then that company had bigger problems that Solr. Nor would I judge Solr by that story (I have never used Solr, nor am I involved with it in any way).